


yours is the face (which makes my body burn)

by hoko_onchi



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst With A Side of Angst, Endgame Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, M/M, Minor Kady Orloff-Diaz/Julia Wicker, Monster!Quentin, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Season 4 AU, Smutty Angst, apparently i can't write a fic without smut, no smut involves the monster; it's all flashbacks, oh wait you guys did, who knew
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:22:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25038424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoko_onchi/pseuds/hoko_onchi
Summary: He was gutted when Brian didn’t show up that night. A week ago now. He’d gone to bed after drinking half of the wine and eating a cold crab cake. And at midnight—Brianhadshown up, and Nigel had been—maybe delighted is too strong a word. He waspleased. Maybe there was an explanation—an accident or a family emergency. When he stepped up to Brian, thinking only of how much he wanted to kiss him again, he stopped cold. There was somethingwrongin his eyes. Distant,chilling. His breath had caught in his throat, and Brian had gripped his arm—so tight he’d seen purple-yellow bruises there the next day. ‘Eliot, you tried to kill me. But you’ll be—useful. I think everything’s more fun when you do it with a friend. You were friends with Quentin. Best friends. Now you can be mine.’-Title from Monster by Mumford and SonsCheck out my fic playlist right here!
Relationships: Brian/Nigel (The Magicians), Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 57
Kudos: 99





	1. the bastard son of a british lord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kh530](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kh530/gifts).



> This fic is being written for Kh530, who bought a spot from me at the Not Alone Here BLM charities auction! Follow them on Twitter for more information: @notaIonehere.
> 
> This is a season four AU in which the Monster possesses Quentin, and Eliot is left to deal with the mess. I'm exploring how his guilt over past choices comes into play, how Quentin's depression/anxiety/grief plays into what his Happy Place looks like, Margo's pain in seeing Eliot deal with this development, and the bond that forms between Julia and Eliot.
> 
> Warning for depictions of violence. It's not overly graphic, but we know how the Monster rolls, and it's not like, super peaceful. I'll put specific warnings in each chapter.
> 
> Follow me @hoko-onchi-writes on Tumblr for random yelling about The Magicians.
> 
> All the love to RedBlazer for her beta work, and buckets of overwhelming hugs and stuff for my Stone Fruits who talked me through this concept.
> 
> Kudos and comments are life! I'd love to hear from you <3.

~Brian~

“No, no. I just—I know it’s weird.” He shifts his phone from one ear to the other, holding it between his chin and shoulder as he approaches the townhouse in Capitol Hill where he’s been living for the past month and a half. “Yeah, I know—like, he might be a serial killer who chops people up for funsies. But he’s—yeah, he’s just. I feel like I know him, if that makes any sense. Or like—I used to. I know it’s bizarre, but it’s just coffee. And he’s really, like, unreasonably gorgeous. So if it fizzles out, at least there’s that, right? He has like half an accent. He mostly grew up here, but his parents are British. It’s—yeah. It’s really hot.”

When he starts up the steps, he has an odd, wavering memory of living in another place so much like this—an expansive apartment with a wall of windows, posters over his bed. A roommate—his best friend, petite and lovely and raspy-voiced. He shakes it away; just a strange sensation of deja vu. Reality check, Brian. His best friend is Gil Braithwaite, and he’s rambling in Brian’s ear about something that happened at the English department meeting he missed this morning, telling Brian to text him as soon as he gets to his coffee date and when he leaves, hopefully still in one piece.

“Yeah, okay. I will. I’m sure he’s—I mean, it’s fine. He’s a bartender, and he’s in school for um—education. Music education. He wants to teach like, elementary school kids to play the recorder. It’s fine. I’m excited. I haven’t had a date since—well, since April left for New York. And—it’s just coffee.”

* * *

Brian picks out a light blue button-down with very pale pink stripes. It fits him well enough, and it looks good with his one clean pair of khakis. He would have gone to the laundromat if he’d known he’d meet a handsome stranger at the boba shop near his office at the university. _Nigel_ , like that was a name people actually had, sat down across from Brian at the wrought iron table, all long legs and elegant hands, giving Brian a smile that made him feel like… like warm liquid, ice cream melting on pavement. Like Nigel had unknotted all the tension inside of him just by sitting down across from him and saying, “You like matcha? Let me take you to this shop near Pike Place. They make a coconut-green tea latte that’ll change your life, I swear it.”

And here he is, walking back down the stairs and getting into an Uber to this tea shop with a matcha latte that he’s sure he’s not going to taste because he’ll be… listening to the soothing hum of Nigel’s hybrid accent, watching his long fingers as he shakes out a sugar packet, looking at his eyes which—Brian thinks they're hazel, probably. Something tells him that it's _hazel_ even though they looked bright green today with the deep gray and burgundy cardigan Nigel had been wearing over a faded black henley. 

Just one of those weird things.

In a way, Brian feels like he’s been treading water for the better part of a year. He doesn’t know _why_ exactly—he’s been seeing a therapist just to check if he’s _depressed_ since that’s a thing that happens to people, or so he's told. He’s been trying to stay ahead of the creeping feelings of _wrongness_ that hit him out of the blue—like the thought about his apartment today. Most of these images or impressions or whatever they are leave him unsettled and anxious, like he’s being tossed back and forth between two brains. He keeps trying to explain it to the therapist—and she’s smiling and patient and asks all the questions that she was taught to ask in her LCSW program. But she doesn’t _get it_ , doesn’t understand that the sensation of being unmoored from his life, his real life, is such that he sometimes he can’t sleep, is having trouble remembering to eat. He paces his apartment floor at night, wearing a path in the wood. It’s like there are absent pieces of his life, people and places he misses but can’t exactly remember, like he’s swimming just above the surface of something vast and terrifying but it’s impossible to dive down into it and find out what the fuck it is. 

Meeting Nigel is the first—he guesses he’d call it deja vu—of these experiences that hasn’t left him terrified or dazed. Just seeing his face—it felt like coming home. 

Brian fidgets with the sleeves of his coat—it’s worn out in places along the corduroy cuffs—and he pulls on his beanie just as the car pulls up next to Oddi Tea, a little shop tucked away next to a thrift store. There’s a water feature out front and tall bamboo gates that lead to a garden behind the brick storefront. Something in his stomach flips over when he sees the tall figure standing by the door, wearing a long black trench coat and a red and purple scarf. His dark curls are loose and a little windblown, mist clinging to the hair that falls over his forehead. A strange memory hits Brian—the same person but—different, a little. Wearing a wool cloak in midwinter, walking uphill to a thatch-roof cottage, smoke curling from the chimney through the skeletal tops of leafless peach trees, snow just starting to fall. He shakes his head against the image because it’s not real, is it? None of what Brian has been seeing is real. That’s what his therapist keeps insisting—the memories are not memories, but projections, his mind reaching out, trying to construct a different reality than the one he’s living. 

Brian thinks his therapist is full of shit, to be honest. He thinks, when he concentrates hard enough, that he can see this whole other life he’s not _supposed to_ see. Maybe he’s just fucking crazy. Or depressed, like his ex says. Or living in a fantasy world, like his mom tells him. 

His date with Nigel makes him feel a little more normal. Like he’s living in a real life, one with some kind of meaning or goal, or well—it sounds silly for a first date, doesn’t it? But he buys Brian a flaky pastry with almond and vanilla in the middle, and they share it while they talk about springtime in Seattle, the way they sometimes miss the East Coast, their favorite movies. (Brian confesses his love for _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ , which is, he knows, a little corny—but Nigel just smiles. And Nigel’s is _Philadelphia Story_ , which is just overall, Brian believes, a really classy choice. He saw it, maybe, a long time ago. And he thinks he might like to watch it with Nigel. Sometime.)

Because Nigel isn’t only gorgeous. He is that—like times ten. All movie-star smile and ten feet of leg. He’s also oddly sweet and weird, with a dry sense of humor. He smirks at himself when he makes jokes, and then looks half-expectantly at Brian, all pleased when he laughs. There’s a certain contagious excitement in him, too, when he talks about starting a life in the Northwest. It’s different from where he grew up—London and New York—and he’s ‘indescribably fond,’ as he says, of the teachers at his internship at one of Seattle’s tougher school districts. He’s been heading up the elementary school band, or ‘approximation thereof,’ making ends meet working at a bar in Capitol Hill, living in a flat with four other musicians. Brian is sort of—dumbstruck, he might say. He thinks that’s how he’ll describe it to Gil. Just—awed. He’s not the type of guy people notice. He doesn’t get asked out on dates, especially not by guys like Nigel. Guys who sing and play not just piano but like—the clarinet—and the fucking accordion, who can talk about Camille Saint-Saëns and The Magnetic Fields in the same breath, who go to art exhibits and have signature mojito recipes, and volunteer at animal shelters. 

When Nigel reaches across the table and takes his hand, palm up, a strange, staticky electricity passes between them. Brian gasps, nearly flinches away, but Nigel doesn’t let go of his hand. Instead, he meets Brian’s eyes and traces his fingertip along the lines of Brian’s palm. 

“You’ve got an interesting heart line,” Nigel says. 

“Oh, I’m not much of one for, like. That kind of thing, I guess.” He swallows. _Not a psychic. They’re losers,_ his brain supplies. He brushes away the thought like a gnat, as his therapist has instructed him to do. 

“You don’t want to know what’s interesting?” Nigel traces his finger back over the line just beneath the fleshy pads beneath his fingers. 

Brian gulps, cheeks hot. “Yeah. No. I do.” He smiles. “It’s just pseudoscience, isn’t it? This stuff’s not—not real.” He sounds like he’s reassuring himself. He sounds like that a lot these days.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. My mother was a singer—Celtic ballads. She was the one who taught me to play accordion. She traveled to events all over the state when I was a boy. There was always a palmist at whatever—Renaissance Faire or Scottish folk festival or what have you. So I picked it up. And I haven’t seen this before—”

“Now you’ve built it up,” Brian says, grinning. “And it’s probably something like I’ll drop English and be—like an accountant or—”

Nigel laughs. It’s beautiful, warm. “Definitely not. You’ve got a—do you see that?” He runs his finger just above the—whatever it is—the heart line. There’s a faint impression just there, and Brian gets a woozy feeling when Nigel touches it again, like that pile up of weird occurrences is about to topple over, spilling onto the table between them. But he just nods. Because he does—he sees it. “I haven’t seen anything like that. It’s long—a long life—and there are two marriage lines.” 

Brian bites his lip. “I’ve never been—I mean, I’m not married.” He knows he’s likely very red now. “I’m single,” he adds uselessly. 

“Good,” Nigel says, glancing up at him again, eyes green green green. “I was going to ask you out again.”

“Oh,” Brian says, a big silly grin plastered across his face. “Oh, yeah. I—I’d like that.”

“Fantastic. I’ll make you dinner, yeah? Tomorrow night?”

Brian beams at him. He can’t—he can’t not just _smile_. Nigel holds his hand like that for a long time, running his fingers over the intersecting lines, their stories put aside, untold for now. 

When they leave, they end up walking in the same direction, and Nigel takes his arm. He points out vintage cars and the styles of architecture because these are also things he just _knows_ , it seems. Nigel kisses him by his bus stop—and it’s soft and tender, wholly new and thrilling and deeply reminiscent of something familiar, something like _home_ , he thinks, not for the first time. Brian hasn’t had anything that felt like home, not for a long while, maybe not since he left Boston years ago. And he leans into it, tangling his fingers in Nigel’s damp, windblown hair, tasting a hint of green tea, a trace of almond extract on Nigel’s tongue. His lips are soft and full, and he’s so tall. Brian wants to wrap himself in all of Nigel’s edges, forget all the madness that’s started to slip into his life.

Nigel gives him a smile just before he boards the bus, and Brian decides to walk home even though it’s a little too cold. He’s thinking about Nigel and _Philadelphia Story_ and his decision to get boba tea before work and his maybe two marriages in another life. And he’s hopeful for the first time since April left. Nigel is someone he could really _like_. He’s _good_ and kind and scary-brilliant and talented, Brian thinks, even if it doesn’t seem like he sees himself that way. 

He smiles when he sees the woman standing outside of his apartment because he feels a little slap-happy, soaked to the bone now. He pulls his beanie down over his ears and walks up to the steps, fumbling for his keys. 

“Quentin— _Quentin_ —I _found_ you,” she says. There’s something odd about her voice, like it’s being forced through her voice box by something that’s _not her_. Her dark eyes seem to _flicker_ when she looks at Brian, and something about her puts Brian in mind of a snake.

“I—I’m sorry—” Brian steps back, his heart rate picking up. “I’m—I mean—I think you must have me confused with someone else.” 

The air seems to _shift_ around the woman, the realness of her stuttering and shifting in that way that reality sometimes flickers out in Brian’s brain—but infinitely worse because he’s _seeing_ it happen in real time. He grabs for his phone, but he drops it on the steps; the screen cracks. When he stoops to pick it up, blood rushing in his ears, he sees something horrible reflected in the air around him, like he’s standing in a hall of funhouse mirrors. 

Something _breaks_ , cracking inside of him, and he feels the air change, the entirety of his selfhood pulling into a tiny dot, like a star collapsing into a black hole. 

And after that, he’s not Brian at all anymore.


	2. more fun with a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel is having a hard day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter needs the content warning! Here we have a re-examination of Season Four, Episode Two. There's some bloody stuff (not intensely described), the death of one pig (again not super described, but it's there), a broken arm, and a broken acolyte of a god (he doesn't make a recovery). Angst ahoy!

~Nigel (and Eliot)~

It happened like this.

Brian never showed up for their date. Nigel had been pattering around his apartment, cleaning, kicking out his roommates, making crab cakes and hollandaise sauce since Brian mentioned he liked seafood. He’d spent twenty bucks he borrowed from his roommate Ned on an actually _nice_ bottle of wine. A petit Syrah. It had a screw top but—that was fine. These days, even some boxed wine was good. Something about that thought made him flinch but—he didn’t know why. 

He’d had weird glitches in his memory for a while, far more since he’d moved to Seattle two months ago. Little flashes of—feeling. A strange sensation when he put on his cardigan, like something was _missing_ from his wardrobe. And—the oddest thing. He’d seen a tiny young woman, his age, maybe, at the boba shop where he’d met Brian. She had lustrous dark hair, and smooth olive skin, red lips and heels— _fabulous_ heels—and something fierce in her expression. He was struck with an unaccountable _longing_ , something pricking in his chest when he met her eye. Like she reminded him of someone he’d known but couldn’t recall, someone so precious that his eyes had filled with tears when she walked away, tea in hand. 

Maybe, he thinks, staring at the blood on the ground, maybe that’s why he’d gotten Brian’s number. He’d been affected—laid bare by seeing that woman, and he’d gotten the same sensation when he’d seen Brian—only more intense. Worse. Like he actually _did_ know him, like he’d forgotten. Been forced to forget.

He was gutted when Brian didn’t show up that night. That was a week ago now. He’d gone to bed after drinking half of the wine and eating a cold crab cake. And at midnight—Brian _had_ shown up, and Nigel had been—maybe delighted is too strong a word. He was _pleased_. Maybe there was an explanation—an accident or a family emergency. When he stepped up to Brian, thinking only of how much he wanted to kiss him again, he stopped cold. He’d—where had he come from? How did he get into Nigel’s apartment? There was something _wrong_ in his eyes. Distant, _chilling_. His breath caught in his throat, and Brian had gripped his arm—so tight he’d seen purple-yellow bruises there the next day. ‘ _Eliot, you tried to kill me. But you’ll be— _useful_. You were friends with Quentin. Best friends. Now you can be mine._’

“Who’s Quentin?” Nigel’s stomach _churned_ when he said the name, Brian’s fingers digging into his arm. 

“This is going to be so much _fun_ ,” he’d said. “Will you play with me?” Nigel thought that Brian’s eyes had flashed with fire. But it could have been a trick of the light. Nigel closed his eyes against the image. When he opened them, they were standing in front of a Motel 8 off of the 101, somewhere north of San Francisco. 

Brian had been— _it_ had been—taking him places and killing things since then. 

Nigel thinks he must be—he _has to be_ hallucinating. But there’s an odd, sticky knot at the center of him that keeps telling him, _You did this. This is exactly what you deserve._

“I can’t—I can’t do that,” Nigel says, flinching when the thing wearing Brian’s skin approaches him. Nigel is holding a pig in his arms. It’s—he thinks it’s probably a baby—he doesn’t really remember how he acquired it. He’s running on so little sleep, so little brain power. 

“Why not?” Brian had been—was still—so incredibly beautiful. All lean, willowy lines and silky hair falling over his eyes. An expressive, squiggly line of a mouth. Dimples and little folds next to his eyes when he smiled. He hadn’t smiled like that since—since he’d met Nigel for tea and told him about the fantasy literature course he was teaching. He was so enchanting, nerding out about something called _Earthsea_ and other books Nigel hadn’t read. But it was comforting to let the words fall around him, like he was used to Brian’s voice, like he craved it.

“We can’t—it’s just—the pig didn’t do anything to us. I don’t—I can’t do this. You can—I’ve seen you—you can slit someone open with—your bloody mind. You can’t—can’t you just do this yourself?” Nigel feels frantic. The pig is the first living thing he’s touched in days apart from this _creature_ that paws at him, constantly, like an attention-starved cat. Its hands, too warm, leave him shaking.

“You’re human. You’re the one who needs to call to Enyalius.” 

“Who the _fuck_ is Enyalius?”

The thing that might or might not be Brian regards him with those big brown eyes like he’s—it’s—sort of like it’s dissecting a frog. Something mildly interesting but utterly removed from his being. Nigel hasn’t been able to decide if Brian was _always_ this. Sometimes he thinks—he must have been, that Nigel had been drawn in and just didn’t know. He’d been blind to it, maybe. Or the thing pretending to be Brian had lured him in with that achingly sweet smile, latte foam on his upper lip, and had shown up that night to work out its plan. He likes to imagine Brian was real, that the kiss they’d shared, electricity buzzing between them, hadn’t been a lie. It doesn’t make sense. None of it does. But in the days that this _thing_ has been carting him around, Nigel has had more strange flashes of remembrance. There’s some story here that he’s not seeing—names and places the thing mentions that he almost recognizes. 

_Quentin. Eliot. Blackspire. The Old Gods. Brakebills. Fillory._ Nigel doesn’t know these things. At the same time, they sound like an echo, like something he’d tried to memorize for a test a long time ago, and it had all slipped away the next day. There’s a searing, guilty core to all the feelings, made worse when Brian gazes at him like this, simultaneously intent and unfocused. 

“I forget you don’t know these things, not-Nigel. The magic on you doesn’t want me to tell you more.” He—it—steps up to Nigel and pushes back a lock of hair from his forehead, a mockery of what Nigel had wanted to do when he’d first seen Brian, his floppy hair so tempting. “You must—” The thing produces a knife from—fucking nowhere, he guesses, and sticks it in Nigel’s hands. “—take this and sacrifice the pig. You gut it. Spread it on the stone. And you pray. Easy peasy.” The Brian-thing takes the pig from his arms, holding it almost _lovingly_ , and Nigel’s heart drops. He feels the lack of it, the squirmy warmth of the pig—and now, instead, he’s holding the knife, a cold and merciless thing. 

“No—I—please don’t make me. I love animals—I’m a pescatarian—”

The Brian thing watches him, bored, as Nigel throws the knife down on the stone—is it an old grave? Some kind of altar? “Silly.” It shakes its head. “I can just—”

The thing crooks its finger, and Nigel collapses, his arm twisted at an impossible angle. Nigel’s screams roar in his ears, blocking out the thing— _the Monster_ , he thinks, the thought surfacing from somewhere inside the howling terror, the burning, twisting pain making its way up his arm, pulsing through him in agonizing waves. He’s moaning, holding his arm at the elbow, looking up at the sky. He can’t look at his arm where it hangs, limp. _Radius, ulna,_ he thinks. Split in half, cracked apart like an egg. The sky seems so blue above him, expansive and peaceful, cloudless. It seems like it shouldn’t be that way, like it should be all red. Volcanic.

Nigel wishes that everything had just been fucking normal, that he could have had dinner with Brian, get tipsy, make out on the couch like teenagers, and hold him like he’d so desperately wanted when he saw him wearing that stupid gray beanie. Now that fucking hat covers an unwashed, greasy rat’s nest of hair. And the creature wearing it is a murder machine that just broke Nigel’s arm with some kind of dark _power_. 

When the Monster threatens to break his leg, Nigel relents, sobbing. “I’ll do it—I’ll fucking do it— _please_.” 

He doesn’t know what he’s asking for, what the ‘please’ even means. But the Monster nods like this makes sense, hums like with contentment. “Good. And you—you’re very good, too.” It holds the pig, nuzzling against its nose. “Goodbye kisses.” 

Nigel’s stomach churns, spikes of pain radiating in jagged bursts when he attempts to move, sweat gathering on his forehead. Almost as an afterthought, the Monster waves his hand, and Nigel’s bones knit back together with a sickening _clack-clack-clacking_ sound that he hears and _feels_ , pulsing inside him. He’s weeping openly now, looking up to the pig, still blissfully unaware of its fate. The knitting together of bones echoes in his mind. He’ll never not dream about that sound, he thinks dimly. He’ll never be free of it.

The Monster helps him up, almost tender, and hands him the knife. 

He remembers something, maybe, when he slaughters the pig. Like—like—he’s done this before. His mind whites out with the blood soaking his hands, letting the oddly specific muscle memory take over. Like Nigel’s hippie mom would have ever had him butcher a hog but—he knows how to slit its throat so it goes quick, knows how to split it open and pull out the entrails. It’s done, and now he’s praying and praying because the thing is telling him to pray. And his thoughts—swirling and frenetic—he doesn’t know if this is prayer. He didn’t grow up praying. His dad—he was Anglican, maybe. But his father had lived with his other family, the real one. Nigel’s mother just believed in playing music, in being kind. He wonders absently if she’s okay. He knows he’s not doing it right, the praying. Nothing is happening.

“Pray harder— _harder_.” The Monster is looming over him, even though its body is at least half a foot shorter than Nigel’s. It smells like blood and saliva, nothing like Brian when Nigel had kissed him (clean, sweet, like mint and coconut shampoo). That’s a sign, perhaps, that this creature is _using_ Brian’s body, wearing it like a suit. 

Nigel thinks about Brian a lot—too much. He doesn’t know why he misses someone who might not be real. Who might have been a Monster all along.

“I can’t—I _can’t_. I don’t know _how_.” His voice breaks, and his face is wet, from the blood or the sweat, maybe. He’s still in shock, perhaps. “Please—just—you can call him—or summon him? I don’t know how.” He thinks he’s crying. It’s not that he hasn’t cried this past week; it’s just that he hasn’t let the thing _see_ his tears, but maybe it doesn’t know what crying is. It’s seen enough people begging for their lives that it should be able to hazard a guess about what’s going on with Nigel’s face.

“No, you,” the thing says. “Keep on—this would be so much _easier_ if you remembered. I can help _motivate_ you—” It raises a hand like it did when it broke his arm. He can still feel the pain sitting in his bones, can still hear the sick crunching sound. 

“I’m—okay—don’t, don’t do anything like that. I—I can’t pray if I’m hurt. It might not—just won’t work if I am. So—okay. I’ll try.”

It puts a hand on his shoulder, gripping, again, too hard. “Go on, then.”

“Okay, okay.” Nigel flinches away from the thing with Brian’s voice, and when he closes his eyes, he thinks he falls asleep for a moment. He’s slept so little—in shitty motel rooms and in a rental car the Monster made him get. The thing, when it sleeps, plasters itself against Nigel. And he can’t—he _can’t_ sleep when it does that. Not with Brian’s face and hands and body, and he’d _liked_ Brian. Brian didn’t seem like he would have clung to Eliot like this thing does; even if he stumbled over his words, there was nothing possessive or disturbing in the way he spoke. He wonders where Brian is, the man he liked so much, if he even existed. If he’s alive.

The shitty Nissan Rogue Nigel had rented is abandoned on the side of the road somewhere near Modesto—it’s covered in someone’s blood; he doesn’t remember whose. There have been so many—the thing has killed a lot of people. Animals. The car is on his credit card, so that’ll be fun when his roommates see the bill or the police or whoever is coming for him. Someone will come. But Nigel doesn’t think he’ll be there. There’s no way he’ll be anything other than dead by the time this is over. Someone appears when he opens his eyes—dark haired and bearded, leaning against a tree, and maybe this is it. Maybe it’s Enyalius, and Nigel will be free, or maybe it’ll just kill him, and this nightmare can end. 

He thinks he begs when the Monster rips the man open searching for—something, he doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter. He can’t hear himself talking, can’t make out the words as the thing searches inside, Brian’s arm covered in blood and viscera. 

His life—Nigel’s life—had been so _good_ , finally. He’d worked hard to get to his internship in Seattle. He’d be finished with his master’s in education come summer. And he’d—he’d met Brian, who felt like a missing puzzle piece that one afternoon. It sounds crazy. He is, granted, probably losing his mind from watching the thing wearing Brian’s skin kill countless people—including, most recently, a man who’d sold them ice cream. The thing had made him eat it and after it had killed the man in the truck—now he was splitting a man in half, and he’d had to kill a little animal who hadn’t done anything to anyone. Nigel is crying now, openly, as the man falls, tears blurring his vision. He just wishes—wishes it were over. Needs it to be over.

Just as the man falls, body lifeless and gray-skinned, there’s something like a shockwave that crashes through the glen where they tried to call Enyalius and failed, adding another body to the count. They’ve had to—Nigel has had to—get creative about hiding bodies, as the Monster doesn’t seem to understand that actions have consequences, that police exist, and the FBI is quite likely looking for them. The force ripples through the woods around them, and it feels like there’s something being plucked from inside Nigel, or _off of him_ , like fingers lifting away dead skin after a sunburn, revealing the raw flesh beneath. 

It’s that, Eliot thinks, it’s just that the dead skin is _Nigel_. And he’s, all at once, remembering, looking at Quentin’s face, its expression both blank and curious, watching him. It smiles, a parody of his—of Q’s smile, crinkled and dimply and sweet. 

“Eliot,” it says blandly, voice too _slow_. It steps over the limp figure at its feet. “You’re back. I was getting tired of the Nigel game.” 

Eliot, shaking, raises his hands to cast—the Magic Missile, he thinks it’s called. Not that that particular spell had done anything to the Beast, in the end, but it worked well enough in emergencies—and maybe Eliot could catch it off guard, knock it out. And then—then he can figure out how to rescue Quentin, get him back from wherever he is. It takes just a millisecond for the Monster to react, cutting off Eliot’s paltry source of magic, stopping him dead in his tracks. His body feels—immobilized. His gaze lands on that—that _thing_ that has Quentin's body all over it. Its brow is furrowed, like it’s disappointed.

“Q. Quentin,” Eliot says uselessly. “ _Quentin_.” Maybe, _maybe_ , Quentin hears him, somewhere inside, just _blocked_ off. 

“Quentin isn’t here,” the Monster says. “He’s gone. I ate him. So he can’t hear you. But I’m here—”

Eliot flinches. His insides feel crushed, like the Monster has him in a vise and is _tightening_ it, bit by agonizing bit. The thing flicks its wrist, and Eliot’s limbs loosen—but he still feels a stranglehold, pulling on the farthest reaches of him, the places he’s kept hidden for all his life, really. But especially since he met Quentin. And—since the quest.

He drops to the ground, legs giving out beneath him. “Please,” Eliot says. “Please.” 

The Monster ignores him, comes and sits next to him. “Wrong god today. Doesn’t have what I’m looking for.”

“Why—why did you have to torture him to death?”

“Hm?” The Monster leans its head against Eliot’s shoulder, a twisted facsimile of what Quentin used to do. In the cottage on rainy afternoons while he studied from Practical Applications Volume One, while he practiced his Poppers. At the mosaic, after working all morning, absently seeking affection. “Oh. Gods—they are so _tricky_.”

“Oh. That makes… sense.” Eliot knits his brows, heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears. Nigel hadn’t had what Eliot would call an _issue_ with substance abuse, didn’t drink to excess, hadn’t tried to cope with the Monster in that way. But Eliot—Eliot could use a motherfucking drink. A strong one. And then a second one. And then a—whatever the fuck Josh has on hand. “How do you—how do _we_ find the one you were after today?”

“I… don’t know yet. But we’ll find him. And the others. I’ll get back what they took from me.”

“What did they—what did they take?” He’s aiming for keeping his voice calm and even because— _because_ , if Quentin is anywhere, he’s inside this creature wearing his skin, this god or—whatever he is. 

“I’m not entirely sure—something that helped me _know_ things. Something I need.” The Monster’s voice is usually devoid of emotion, but its words sound almost pained. “It wasn’t fair.”

“Of course it wasn’t. They—they took it. You’ll find it.” And he’d let this thing take something Eliot had needed. He’d given it away though, hadn’t he? He’d let Quentin go and then acted like—in the moments leading up to shooting the Monster—that Quentin was still his. He swallows against the lump forming in his throat. 

The Monster lifts its head. “You know—I thought I wouldn’t like you, Eliot. But it’s so good to have a friend like you. You understand me.”

Eliot flinches. He hopes it doesn’t see. “That’s… nice. I’m known for my… hm. Understanding.” 

“I can see that we’ll have fun together, Eliot. So much fun. There’s so much to do, still. And I can do it with a friend.” 

Eliot inches away from the Monster, from Quentin’s body. “You know. Quentin was my friend. Is he—is he okay? When you find what you need—could he come back?”

“You—you’d rather have him here than me?”

_Yes_ , Eliot thinks desperately. _I’ll do anything_. “No—no. That’s not what I meant. He was just my friend—I wanted to—”

“You miss all of your friends. The ones who came to my castle. To kill me.” Accusatory.

“No—no—” Eliot’s heart is pounding wildly. The Monster will—he can _kill_ Quentin. Or Margo. _Margo_. Any of them. “That was—they didn’t—”

“Good,” the Monster says. “We’ll go find them.”

The world blips out around Eliot, and all he sees is darkness, like the world has just shut its eyes.


	3. the happy place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> According to RedBlazer, Quentin's Happy Place is 'getting railed in a sunbeam.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the thanks to RedBlazer for helping me with this fic.

~Quentin~

“It’s like a—I don’t know, a mother dog and a puppy.” Quentin puts his hand to his forehead and wipes away sweat. It’s not quite hot, but they’ve been putting tiles down for two hours, and it’s sunny as shit over the mosaic at this time of day. But it’s nice—it’s spring. He doesn’t remember when it crossed over to spring, but it must have been recently.

“Um, hmm.” Eliot puts a hand on his shoulder, brushes a thumb over the skin peeking out beneath the Fillorian linen shirt he’s had to adopt. After eighteen months, his t-shirt and hoodie are no longer holding up to mending spells. Eliot particularly likes this shirt because it ties up at the shoulders, and he can slip his fingers beneath the fabric or just _pull_ at the ties. Eliot is, Quentin thinks, extremely distracting. This is a quest, for fuck’s sake. “I don’t really see it. I thought it was supposed to be a horse. You didn’t specify when you made the design, baby.”

 _Baby._ Quentin doesn’t respond to that because—well, it’s too much, sometimes. Accepting that Eliot wants him, cares about him. Loves him, maybe. He thinks—he’s pretty sure—that maybe they’re in a relationship. And it’s, well, it’s the longest relationship Quentin have ever had. He’s… happy? It’s weird. 

Quentin groans. “God, okay. Well it’s—it’s a fucking. Mammal. I guess? It doesn’t matter, does it? We’re not—not going home today. There’s no key.” He leans his head against Eliot’s chest, still a little tentative even after six months of this, whatever _this_ is. Quentin just doesn’t want to fuck it up. It’s one of his main talents—totally fucking things the fuck up.

And Eliot—he’s always expecting Eliot to tell him it’s a big joke, and he’s realized Quentin is _Quentin_ , and the whole thing is off. Eliot’ll tell him he’s moving to the village and fucking the tavern owner, that he’ll walk back up the hill when he’s not otherwise occupied and help Quentin out with a few designs here and there. Oversee it, from the ladder. Quentin is prepared for this. He’s—more than prepared. Expecting it. But it’s been six months and it hasn’t happened yet. 

“It’s okay. We’ll start again tomorrow.” Eliot tugs at one of the strings of his shirt—seriously, _bless_ the Fillorian tailor who invented this design. He traces his finger over the exposed patch of skin, presses his lips there. “You taste so good.”

And _really_ , who gave Eliot the _right_ to say that? Because what it does to Quentin is—well, it’s not fit for like, primetime TV. His skin is _tingling_ with the barest touch. And he guesses it might be ‘new relationship energy’ or whatever (that’s what Eliot had said about him and Alice before… well, before all the fucked up Fillory shit that happened had happened, and Quentin kind of wanted to punch him in his stupid-beautiful face). But it’s not that new—really. Quentin thinks, when he thinks about it, that he loved Alice, really loved her, for what they could have been if their lives had been normal. If they’d met in grad school at Yale, or even if they’d met at Brakebills—a Brakebills without Eliot, maybe. Because—

Eliot tugs at another one of the strings, pulls it loose, kisses him again, right at the crook of his shoulder and neck. “Like salt. And sweat.”

“ _Eliot_ , we should—”

“You smell good, too.” Eliot is nosing at the nape of his neck, his _tongue_ darting out against Quentin’s skin, Eliot’s cheek rubbing against his hair. He forgot what he was planning to say. “Like a _man_.”

And holy _shit_ , if that doesn’t really fucking _do it for him_. “El,” he says. And he can’t say. Anything else.

Eliot keeps nuzzling against him, slipping his hands under Quentin’s shirt and around his waist. He runs his fingers through the hair on his belly, which Quentin has always hated. “I love this, right here,” Eliot says, scratching through the hair, fingers just above the waistband of the weird harem pants that are popular in Fillory in—whatever time this is. 

“Stop it—it’s ticklish,” Quentin says, wiggling, pressing back against—Eliot is _hard_ —but he doesn’t move Eliot’s hand.

“I’ll just—” His voice rumbles in Quentin’s ear, sending a bolt of heat straight through his core. Eliot’s hand is splayed out over his abdomen, still now. Quentin feels the ghost of Eliot’s stubble against the shell of his ear, Eliot just rubbing his face against Quentin like a cat, pressing his nose into Quentin’s hair. “Just do this—all afternoon. Your hair has gotten—so long. Don’t cut it.”

Quentin smiles and makes an embarrassing little noise, small and whimpery. He’d never expected Eliot to be tender like he is. He can be rough when Quentin wants it, and it’s—God, it’s so good. But he’s slow and patient and generous with his hands and his tongue, occasionally focusing so much on Quentin that Eliot himself is an afterthought. Quentin remembers bits and pieces of that first time, but they were both a total, fucked up mess—no hints at the man Eliot is now. The frantic, groping touches and the desperate, brutal way they’d needed each other. The kiss, that he won’t forget. Putting Eliot’s hand to the back of his neck; Eliot’s grip against him, fingers tangling in his hair. He had—he knows—fallen on Eliot’s dick like he was starving for it, moaning when he tasted him, felt the velvety skin against his tongue. He doesn’t remember much about Margo, just that she was _overwhelming_ in the way that she always had been—violently beautiful and powerful and so absolutely proud and certain. He’d woken up with Eliot’s arm draped across him, possessive, and he’d fallen apart, Alice’s eyes on him. 

He’ll possibly never forgive himself for how he treated Eliot and Margo that day—Eliot tells him now that it doesn’t matter. And maybe it doesn’t. They’re here. And they’re together, or something like together. And Quentin is, maybe he’s a little in love with Eliot, and maybe he has been for a while. Maybe before the quest. But it doesn’t bear repeating aloud if that’s not what Eliot wants—and Quentin thinks it couldn’t be, that he couldn’t want something at that level, not the way Quentin wants it. But Eliot is here and he’s pulling the rest of the (mostly useless) ties at the shoulders of his shirt, kissing along the line of his shoulders, his cock growing hard against Quentin’s thigh. And it’s—it’s _so good_. It always is. It’s good when Eliot pulls the shirt off and throws it aside, when he slips his hand beneath Quentin’s waistband, touching him.

“Hey,” Eliot says, mouth close to Quentin’s ear. “What do you want?”

“Well, I _wanted_ to do another pattern—”

“Mm.” Eliot nuzzles at his ear, and his long fingers are wrapped around Quentin’s cock, resting there. “Did you _want_ to, or did you think we _ought_ to? Those are different things.”

Quentin laughs; his cheeks almost hurt from smiling. Sometimes here, in the sun on golden afternoons like this, he thinks that he’s never smiled or laughed so much anywhere with anyone. They’ve fought—a lot. Especially in the early days. It’s not perfect. There’s no running water and no heat besides the warming spells that Eliot adapted for the cottage. The work is tedious and sweaty, and their hands and arms are always covered in chalk—it’s all over _everything_ somehow. And yet. “No, I guess I think—mmnh, _Eliot_ —”

“We’re not discovering the beauty of all life this afternoon. We gave it a shot with your horse. So. Let me show you what I’ve been thinking about. It’s very beautiful, I _assure you_.” 

“Are you saying your dick is beautiful?” Quentin can’t stop laughing now, and Eliot is _rapidly_ undressing him right where _anyone_ could come by and just see them, a thought that makes Quentin hot all over and even, a little, more turned on.

“It _is_ beautiful.”

“Jesus.”

“Q.”

“Hm?”

“What do you _want_?” Eliot is kissing the spot behind Quentin’s ear that drives him more or less to the edge of sanity. In the good way, he guesses. He’s been there in the bad way plenty of times, and this is _not_ that.

“You know.”

“I know what?” Eliot has shucked off his shirt, and his chest is pressing against Quentin’s back. Eliot loves it like this—on warm days, their skin covered with sweat. Getting messy. Quentin shivers despite the sun shining down.

“You know what I want.”

“Tell me.” 

“Take me—take me to bed.”

“I’d appreciate more specifics, but—” Eliot is already moving them toward the daybed, and Eliot wonders if they ought to put up a shielding spell. (The tinker going through town two weeks ago had gotten an eyeful.) Quentin decides he doesn’t care, and Eliot _certainly_ doesn’t care. He said the tinker should send them a thank-you card.

“Dealer’s choice?” Quentin is giggling, and Eliot pushes him down on the bed, somehow looking graceful even as he shimmies out of his trousers. His dick _is_ beautiful—long and thick, red at the tip when he’s hard. 

“Nerd,” he says. “You know my choice. You should by now.”

And Quentin flushes, letting his body go where Eliot wants it, legs spread, wrapped loose around Eliot’s body. _Eliot_. He’s devastatingly gorgeous, so _big_ , his hands so deft. He’s working his way down Quentin’s body, murmuring the prep spell that gets him clean and ready. Quentin bucks up when it takes hold, whining and aching hard. Eliot smirks up at him before spreading Quentin’s legs and burying his face between them, kissing over Quentin’s cock, rubbing his stubble against it, licking down over his balls and to his ass. He’s already already slick, but Eliot licks into him anyway, groaning, an obscene sound that makes Quentin’s stomach flip. He knows this now, how to take Eliot, how to let him take what he needs. And that’s, Quentin thinks, what he always wants, as he feels himself turn to liquid in the afternoon sun, his body sighing open, his leg kicked over Eliot’s shoulder. It’s slow, careful—first just his tongue and soon, fingers, working gently inside of him, sending sparks up his spine, making him babble, incoherent. 

_So, so good—more, please—more—please—don’t stop—_. As if Eliot _would_ stop. He’s watching his fingers where they disappear inside of Quentin now, a stricken expression on his face, meeting Quentin’s eyes with a _bare_ look of need. Quentin is rock hard and leaking when Eliot lines himself up and pushes against him, huge and blunt. He craves it now, the way it feels for Eliot to have him, to breach his surface and join with him. He’s begging now because he’s incoherent with want. That’s what Eliot does—changes the track of Quentin’s mind, clears the cobwebs, takes him out of himself, even if it’s just a moment in time.

It’s so much when he slides inside of him, so fucking intense, so good his spine his melting against the pile of blankets Eliot has procured over the past months from God knows where. 

“Q—so good, baby,” he breathes, face pressed to Quentin’s hair, lips brushing against his cheek as he moves inside of him. “Baby, _baby_ —”

It hadn’t been like this at first, the pet names and the cuddling. Eliot had always been gentle and kind and patient, from the first time, but it seemed like he’d sealed himself off from anything beyond the physical piece of their relationship. It had happened primarily at night that first couple of months and then it was like this—afternoons, when they’d finished for the day, Eliot’s hand at his waist and cupping his ass, Eliot’s mouth on him as he looked up at Quentin with his dark lashes, irises copper and gold and green. It evolved, he thought, when the winter had started to fade into spring, when they’d stripped off their cold weather clothes and laid out under the sun, stayed up late talking by the fire like there was no one else. 

Quentin’s spine is arching against the bed, his teeth clacking against Eliot’s as he leans down and kisses him hard. His cock rubs against Eliot’s abdomen as he fucks into him in steady, confident strokes. He’s so keyed up; he feels the pressure building inside of him, the mix of pounding pleasure and longing, precome pooled against his stomach. Eliot dips his fingers in it and, propped up on one elbow, fucks him as he licks his fingers clean, keeping his eyes on Quentin the whole time and—Quentin _comes_ without warning, tensing up against Eliot and digging his heels into the back of his thighs. 

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Eliot says, punched out and wrecked, as Quentin spills over his stomach, helpless and sobbing as Eliot drives into him. It’s so impossibly good, his orgasm resounding through him, still reverberating as Eliot’s brows knit together and he groans, ragged and low, pulsing into Quentin and collapsing against him.

“El,” he hears himself saying, “that was—oh my God.”

Eliot is laughing and nodding against his shoulder, kissing and tasting his skin, his sweat. “You don’t know what you do to me—you have no idea. Driving me crazy in that shirt.” 

“Blame it on the shirt,” Quentin mumbles. 

“It’s you,” Eliot says. “I love you—I’m so in love with you.” 

_What the fuck?_

“I—” Quentin furrows his brow because this isn’t—this feels wrong. It’s not the way—it’s not the way it is. Eliot isn’t his, not like this. Is this happening? Or—what’s going on?

A niggling thought—this isn’t happening. Doesn’t happen. Not for a long time. It takes years and years—and why is this—why is this occurring to him? He’s here. This is real. But this is the wrong narrative. It’s not how his life in Fillory is. This day had happened, hadn’t it? But it—not like this. Was this a dream? Or—was this real and—maybe he was losing his actual goddamn mind.

“Q, what’s wrong?” Eliot’s voice is mild—and he’s gentle and kind—but his Eliot is hesitant. His Eliot drops pet names like it’s nothing, but try to bring up one thing about the _long haul_ , which is what Quentin wants by this point, and Eliot is all justifications and proclamations about what Quentin does and doesn’t want. And this—this is not that. It’s all _wrong_. This isn’t _how the story goes_. 

“ _Q. Quentin? Quentin.”_ He hears Eliot’s voice from somewhere far away, not from here. It’s desperate and _sad_ and afraid. 

“Eliot—hey—Eliot!” Quentin pushes up on the bed, looking up into the sky like that’s where he might find a clue. The trees shift in a strange, endless pattern above them, like a GIF that loops near-perfectly but—if you just looked long enough.

“Hey, I’m right here,” Eliot was saying. He felt more unreal now, like he might waver out at any second. Like the place—the place _Julia had made_ , that awful replica of the Midtown Mental Health Clinic where he’d lived out his days before Brakebills. And in that place, the one Julia had made in his mind, Eliot had been there, too. Just. This felt familiar. So familiar. Did he remember waking up this morning? Or was it—was he jumping from day to day without really sleeping?

_“You know. Quentin was my friend. Is he—is he okay? When you find what you need—could he come back?”_

Quentin hears Eliot’s voice again, and it’s filled with something like desperation. Pain. Like he’s _trying to find Quentin_. But Quentin is right here. He’s, he’s fine. He’s here. And Eliot is here, brushing his hair away from his face and bending down to kiss him again and he’s—Quentin is _happy_. Really happy. Eliot loves him. He _loves_ him. Calls him ‘baby.’ Wants him all the time. But. 

Something is very, _very_ wrong. 

In the sky, the trees repeat on that same loop, and fantasy-memory-Eliot kisses him. And for a while—a little while, he thinks—he’ll just give in. He knows somehow that he can’t have this anywhere else; if he closes his eyes and stays, he’ll get to keep this. 

And maybe that’s better than anything else. For a little while.


	4. homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang is back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to RedBlazer, once again, for being awesome.

~Eliot~

His heart is pounding when he rounds the corner in the big—weirdly big?—fucking tacky apartment with the insane spiral staircase and the stark blue walls. The Monster blipped him here because it knows Eliot’s friends— _Quentin’s friends_ —are here, and it’s told Eliot it’s planning to kill them, one at a time, while he watches. It had said that like it was… commenting on the weather. Quentin—the _Monster_ —has that blank leer like it always does, its hand on Eliot’s back. Eliot’s stomach tightens in the way it’s always done before he was about to vomit a great quantity of alcohol. That’s what this feels like—a fucking nightmare wrapped in alcohol poisoning. He steps away, sort of, hoping the Monster doesn’t notice. It doesn’t like when Eliot doesn’t pay attention to it, when Eliot pulls away. It’s threatened to hurt Quentin’s body, more than once, but—but it won’t tell Eliot if Quentin is alive. If he’s somewhere. In there. 

Eliot’s impulse is to drink himself into a stupor, make some of the frantic electricity zipping through his body go quiet, at least for a little while. But he’s seen this Monster, wearing Quentin’s pretty face and his big, soft eyes and his silky hair—filthy, now, under that _beanie_ —slice people in half. He’d split open the acolyte of a god, reaching inside his chest and searching through it like he was looking for coins beneath the cushions of a sofa. And the Monster has gotten… _attached_ to him. It touches him and leans on him, rubbing against him like a cat and sleeping next to him, body pressed against Eliot’s—a vile mockery of the careful, calm touch that Quentin has always craved.

_Q was shivering in the glow of their candlelight spells. Winter had come early that year, and the bed was emptier than it had been. They hadn’t even known what they were to each other anymore when Eliot started sleeping in the bed with him again. But it was so hard not to touch Quentin, not when he needed it so badly, craved it like a drug. Needed to cry against Eliot’s chest after Teddy fell asleep, needed Eliot to kiss him, long and deep. He’d never stopped needing that but it was just them now, and Eliot didn’t know if he could be everything to Quentin, everything he needed._

The Monster needs Eliot, too. Sometimes, Eliot thinks it wants him because of some kind of muscle memory. He hopes it doesn’t figure out it anything else it wants. It is—disturbingly— _far_ stronger than a man of Quentin’s size should be. He shudders.

There is so much that Eliot regrets. If he’d said to Quentin that day in the throne room—‘Maybe after all of this is over, after we get magic back, we can think about it, give it a shot. Maybe.’ Or just. ‘Yes.’ Because that’s what he’d wanted, really, at the core of him. He had wanted Quentin from the beginning, an irrational amount of want pouring through him from that first day. He wondered, sometimes, if that desire had crossed over from other timelines where he’d fallen in love with Quentin sooner, unfettered by all the obstacles that Timeline 40 had thrown their way. It had still happened in their timeline, though. Sometime before the quest, maybe—maybe it was when Quentin had crowned him or when they’d held each other in the armory. He’d always wanted Quentin; he’d never stop. He thought he was doing Quentin a kindness when he’d laughed at him, derisive. How could he want someone like Eliot outside of the strange fantasy life that they’d lived?

He’d never imagined that Quentin would want to lock himself away, a babysitter for this childlike Monster for eternity. Eliot wondered, in dark moments, if he’d had something to do with that decision. He’d thought for an awfully long time that Quentin didn’t love him, not _really_ , that he was somehow mistaken, unduly influenced from the fairytale impressions left behind in their minds when Quentin had found the time key. Eliot had convinced himself for a long while that the day in the throne room was like a fever dream. He must have imagined Quentin asking him to give it a shot, telling him they worked together. _Who gets that kind of proof of concept?_ But he had said it, and—here was his payment. What he was due.

“Oh my God, Q—”

Julia nearly jumps over the chair she’s sitting in until she sees Eliot put up a hand in warning, sees him shaking his head. He steps over to Julia, putting a hand on her arm. 

“Hey. Julia, It’s not… Quentin.” He remembers its promise this morning that it would kill his friends. He’d assured the Monster—swore—they’d be useful. He looked back at the Monster, standing by the gold chair in the weird living room, its body held awkwardly, in an un-Quentin-like way—all sharp angles, hair sticking out in greasy spikes beneath the beanie. “This is... our new _friend_. They need some... help. Finding something the gods took. A long time ago.”

Julia’s eyes go wide. “Oh, _shit_.” 

“Margo?” Eliot whispers, looking between Julia and the rest of them—Josh, Penny, Kady, all apparently recovered from the identity spells Fogg had put on them. 

“Fillory, we think,” Julia whispers back. She puts her hand on top of Eliot’s. He’s never known her that well, but she feels lovely and warm and familiar and _human_ , holding inside of her the echoes of Quentin, pieces of him that even Eliot doesn’t fully know. Something catches in his chest, crimson-hot tightness that leaves the taste of copper at the back of his throat. It might be that Julia is all that’s left of Quentin. He grips her arm, maybe too hard.

“What is it,” the thing asks, “that you think these people can provide, Eliot? You seem to want them alive—these friends of yours.” It looks at Eliot quizzically, dark-eyed and birdlike, head tilted like it can’t understand the concept. 

Eliot swallows against the taste in his throat, the churning bile coming up. He can’t remember the last time he ate. “They’re the best magicians I know—we have access to a library filled with—” _Books?_ What the fuck was he supposed to say?

“We know where some of the gods are,” Julia says, quick. She presses the base of her palm to her eyes, wiping away tears. “We can—we can help—”

The door swings open, and Margo steps in, wearing a white jumpsuit that looks like it’s seen some shit by this point in its life cycle. She gasps when she sees him, running to his side and slowly turning to look at the thing wearing Quentin’s body. It’s wearing a hideous graphic t-shirt it had picked up at a Walmart in Soledad, California. The shirt has a picture of a cat with its eyes too far apart, and the word ‘Sufficiently’ embossed in a difficult-to-read script font beneath it. Quentin, being Quentin, has— _had_ —a wardrobe centered around black t-shirts, gray t-shirts, the occasional black button-down for fancy occasions, and seven pairs of black jeans with varying degrees of wearability. The Monster preferred shirts with bright designs, and it had kept Brian’s ugly brown jacket (Nigel had adored it on sight; the thought sends an awful pang through Eliot). 

“What the fuck?” Margo grips his hand. “What the fuck is _that_?”

“That is—as I was saying—our new friend. We’re going to help them find something the gods took. We’re hunting… some gods,” Eliot says, heart beating wildly. 

“And why are we helping—this— _new friend_?” Margo is trying to keep her tone even, measured, her eyes darting over to the Monster. 

The Monster has its eyes on Eliot. “These are all the friends you like more than me. Like you like Quentin more—” The Monster’s voice has gone from blank and slow to ragged, which makes Eliot’s throat burn. On impulse, he pushes Margo and Julia behind him—like it’ll make any difference if it decides it wants to crack one of them open. “— _more_ than me. They’re the ones—they all tried to kill me. _You_ tried to kill me. Why shouldn’t I—kill them?”

“They can help. We can help,” Eliot says desperately. Blood rushes in his ears. _Quentin_ —Quentin would never forgive him if he let something happen to Julia or Margo. He might not forgive Eliot anyway for letting this happen, for _making it happen_ in the first place. “I swear.”

“Why are we helping it?” Margo is clutching at his arm, her voice full of horror. 

_Because it’s Quentin. It’s Quentin. And this is my fault._

Behind him, Julia is shaking. Penny grabs Kady and Josh and nods his head like he’s going to travel and yes—please, take at least some of them the fuck out of here. But the Monster must _feel_ it, whatever travelers do, and it raises one hand lazily, throwing Penny to the ground. “No traveling. Can’t have that.”

The Monster sits in the gold chair, leg tucked under itself—so like Quentin—in the ostentatious living area, a thing that looks like it couldn’t belong to any one of his friends and—where the fuck did this place come from? It’s obviously under some heavy fucking enchantments, stuff that maybe Julia or Margo could manage, but none of them would have had the time to do all of _this_ since the identity spells were lifted mere hours ago. The wards are airtight and there’s something odd about the magic, like it’s been picked apart and put back together by someone who knows both classical and hedge magic—both precise and utterly untamed. And there’s something about that _chair_. Margo dislodges herself from his arm and steps toward a side table. Something is _wrong_ —and Eliot steps back to catch Margo’s arm. 

“Margo, _no_.” 

“It’s not _him_ ,” Margo says, her voice breaking. “Eliot, it’s not him.”

The monster gives them a confused look, pupils so wide that Quentin’s eyes look blank. “I can—” He crooks his finger, and Kady screams, clutching at her chest as blood starts to trickle from her nose. “It’s not _fair_ to talk about me behind my back.” 

“Hey— _no_ — _please_ —” Julia rasps. “Don’t—don’t hurt her. She’s my friend—”

Kady sobs, crying out. “Julia—Jules. Don’t—”

Julia just— _breaks_ , sobbing in big heaving breaths, burying her head against Eliot’s arm. She shifts, letting go of Eliot’s arm. 

“Julia, _no_ ,” Eliot warns. 

Kady lets out a cry of anguish, and Julia runs to her, catching her arm before she falls. “I’ve got you—I’ve got you, okay?” 

Kady nods, blood pouring from her nose, over her lips, splattering over the white shirt she’s wearing. She puts her hand to her nose, catching the blood, her skin ghostly pale, stark against the red of the blood. “Okay—okay,” she whispers.

The Monster waves a hand, almost amused, and Kady screams again. “You care about her, too. Not just _Quentin_. So tedious. I’ll end all of you—and Eliot can help me.” It smiles, sickly.

“ _Wait_ , wait,” Julia rasps. “I can help you. I know gods. Iris. And Bacchus. We know him. We can find them.”

“Enyalius?”

“We can find him. I have—I have connections. I can help. But only if you don’t hurt them. All of them. Including Quentin.” Julia’s tone has changed, like she’s talking ot a child.

The Monster’s lips curl into a smile, and it releases its hold on Kady, who falls into Julia’s arms. “Fine. You can take me to one of them. Call them here.”

Julia gives Kady’s hand a squeeze and leads her to the sofa, helping her lie down and talking softly to her, smoothing her hair and placing a kiss on her forehead. Josh runs to the kitchen, and Eliot can see him getting a bag of ice while Penny props Kady’s head up with some pillows. The Monster watches, mystified, perhaps, that people would come to their friend’s aid, that they cared if she was alive. 

“You’re all so _boring_ , doing all your friend things,” the Monster says. His voice sounds so much like Quentin’s, but there’s a hard, grating edge to it, a slowness to the cadence that sounds to Eliot like nails on a chalkboard. “Blah blah blah, Quentin, don’t hurt my friends, boring.”

It had been clear enough in the castle that the thing inside that body that Eliot shot didn’t have humanity left inside of it. He has to hold on to the hope that Quentin is there, somewhere, hiding, alive, that whatever has taken hold of him hasn’t obliterated the goodness and hope, and all the spiky bits that had made Eliot love him more than anything. So much. All the same things that Eliot, in quiet moments, remembered about their son, about the man he’d become. He swallows hard, tears filling his eyes again. Quentin was never close with Kady, but he _never_ would have let this thing do _that_ to her, not in a million fucking years, not if he had any control. 

“I’m fucking _okay_ in case any of you—” Kady takes a shaky breath. “—assholes over there were wondering.”

“We just miss him. We miss Quentin. We care about our friends,” Julia says, stepping toward the monster carefully. “You must have someone you miss, that you care about.”

The Monster hesitates, regarding her with an almost thoughtful expression. Inasmuch as the Monster thinks, which is not terribly much. “Don’t know,” it says, tapping its fingers against the arm of the chair. “I miss. The things I knew. The things I had.”

“Was there ever someone with you? When you lived in the castle?” Julia takes another step toward it, her voice soft. 

Eliot steps after her, chest clenching, but Margo stops him. “Let her go. We think she’s indestructible—can’t be killed.”

“What the fuck?” Eliot whispers. This fucking crowd. 

“We just miss Quentin. That’s all,” Julia says, sincere. “It doesn’t mean we can’t help you. Right? I have connections. I can’t take you anywhere now, but we can find out what we need to do next. Okay? We just want you to—be careful with us. If we’re gone, we can’t help you. And we want to help you. Just—let’s keep Quentin’s body safe.”

“You talk about Quentin, and it’s boring. _Boring_.” It’s getting agitated—Eliot can feel it even though the thing’s voice is even. “You all want him instead of me. Even Eliot, who didn’t want him at all.”

There’s a ringing in Eliot’s ears, a twist in his stomach. It’s saying something to Julia in that oddly petulant sing-song cadence it has, but the words all tumble together in Eliot’s mind. He knows he should be paying attention—that he _has to_ —but the thing knows—has access to Quentin’s memories. It has to—if it said that. He doesn’t know if that means that Quentin is gone, that he’s been absorbed somehow into whatever the Monster is—maybe irreversibly. Or maybe he’s in there, somewhere, and the Monster is siphoning off memories, picking up bits and pieces of Quentin. But he picked out _that_ memory, interpreted from Quentin’s mind into Eliot _not wanting him_. That gives him a clue about the state of Quentin’s memories, the layout of what he’s feeling, if he’s trapped inside. He is. He has to be okay. Eliot can’t—he can’t imagine a world where Quentin is gone. They had that one lifetime, Eliot needs him in _this one_ , too. Eliot is selfish; he’d admit that to anyone. But there’s no way he can lose Quentin and survive it.

Eliot is shaking, and there are voices—Margo and Julia—and _Margo_ —tugging at him. “El, honey. We can get you something to drink—or I don’t know, a shovel to bash someone’s head in.”

“I—yeah. Maybe. Water. I should sit down.” As soon as he says it, a glass of water appears in his hand. He startles and lets go of the glass—it hangs in midair until Eliot takes it again.

When he focuses on the Monster again, it’s smiling with Quentin’s dimples— _grotesque_. “There you go, Eliot.” Cheerful, like it hadn’t been threatening to kill him and his friends less than five minutes ago. Like it hadn’t reached into Kady’s body and _squeezed_.

“Uh, thanks?” He feels Margo moving him to one of the weird mall furniture chairs with its fuzzy blue fabric. Everything here, all of it, feels so cold and impersonal, like it was downloaded off of a West Elm Pinterest inspo-board. “Bambi, whose apartment is this?”

“Marina’s,” she murmurs. 

“Ah.” Eliot nods. That makes sense. Leave it to that hedge bitch to decorate her apartment like a Pier One catalog nightmare.

“Kady figured out we were under a spell. Found all of us except you and Q and Julia. Julia and _Todd_ fixed us.”

“ _Todd_?”

“I’m putting money on Wicker doing the heavy lifting in that scenario.”

Eliot nods and just puts down the water, staring at it. Maybe he’s in shock still. Nigel was definitely handling this shit better. Because Nigel was a better person than Eliot. He was stable. Employed. Great with kids. He was in a band and worked at a bar and he’d picked up Brian without any fucking effort. Which—well maybe that was because Brian was _Quentin_ without the memories of Eliot being a shitty human. He wishes, idly—because it’s not going to happen and life isn’t any fucking good—that he could have just stayed Nigel. He could have had a job—he never would have been rich, but he’d loved it. Nigel had loved it. And he’d had really _nice_ , non-magic friends and a decent apartment in an okay neighborhood. 

And if he had a chance with Brian—who was an awful lot like Quentin in a button-down shirt and a hat—he would have kept him. He would have loved him and held him and cherished him. No Alice Quinn. No perpetual apocalypse. No fucking Fillory. No Fen—bless her, but Jesus Christ was that a fucking shitshow. And Nigel had a family—not a big one. But somewhere, there was a woman in New York State who’d been enchanted to believe she had a son with a minor British lord. Eliot had _talked to her_ on the phone every two weeks. He would have been happy to believe, for once in his life, that he had a parent who loved him, who’d taught him to play music and learn the Celtic ballads and Irish funeral dirges that he somehow remembers. Maybe he would have even found Margo—Janet? And he’d never have to worry about any of the fucking Monster or releasing it into the world.

“Eliot,” Margo starts softly. “How did this happen?”

Eliot decides he doesn’t want the water that the Monster gave to him. He pushes it away. “I don’t know. I was in Seattle. And so was Brian.”

“Who?”

“Quentin’s... alter ego. We met and we went to coffee. Tea.”

“You don’t drink tea,” Margo says. She leans in. “Was this a date?”

Julia is still talking to the Monster—like it’s a little kid, and Eliot guesses it kind of is. It’s just that it’s the size of a small grown man and has the power of approximately ten master magicians and several deities combined. He watches them blankly for a minute.

Eliot just looks at her and shrugs. Nigel and Brian don’t exist, and they were—functionally—never real. Eliot doesn’t have a master’s degree in education, and Quentin never pursued his PhD. Yes, they’d shared a kiss in the rain, and Brian had said yes when Nigel asked him out a second time. Nigel was nervous, even when he’d acted smooth. He _really_ liked Brian. That part was real. But those people were a lie. Eliot wouldn’t get that kind of shot again. He just needed to bring Quentin home; the rest of it was side plot.

“Does it matter?” Eliot picks at the fuzzy fabric on the chair.

“Jesus, Eliot. So predictable.”

He gives her a faint smile. “And he was supposed to come over.”

She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. 

“And that showed up.” Eliot gestures to the thing that is wearing Quentin’s skin. Brian’s. “It needs to shower. They. He. It’s not super specific about pronouns.” He scrubs at his face. “It’s been… searching for gods. And killing people. It likes to do that. Sometimes it gets rid of the bodies, but it mostly doesn’t care. So. I’ve done a lot of digging. Before I remembered how to do magic.”

“And Quentin?”

“I don’t—I haven’t seen him in there. But the monster might have his memories. Seems like.”

“That thing it said about you—”

Eliot raises his hand. “I’ve done enough explaining. Daddy needs a drink.”

“You need water. And _food_. And a shower,” Margo hisses. 

“I’m not drinking anything it gives to me. I’ve had enough of it. Is there alcohol, or is this actually an Ikea showroom?”

“ _Eliot_ —”

“Margo.”

“You don’t need to get fucked up right now. We can just get you something to eat, and we’ll figure out how to get rid of this thing. Okay?” When he meets Margo’s gaze, there’s something steely there. She glances at a bell on the table by the entryway. “That bell releases something that’ll disable it. Shut it down. Marina said.”

Eliot grits his teeth, a wave of nausea pouring through his gut. “This thing is in _Quentin’s body_. And Quentin might be—he’s _got to be_ alive. So anything that’s going to _hurt him_ —”

“El. This thing is—it’s dangerous. What we learned about it before—”

Eliot’s not really listening. “I made this happen. It was me. My fault. I’m responsible for what it’s doing to Quentin. And I need to find out how to get it the fuck out of him, Bambi.”

Margo squeezes his arm. “We’ll figure something out. Okay? We will.”


	5. we had a family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin figures something out. Eliot is not what he seems.

“Baby,” Eliot murmurs, lips and tongue all over his shoulders, his neck, one hand pressed to Quentin’s heart as Quentin rides him, chills running up his spine.

“You love this.” Eliot’s voice rumbles in his ear, his lips brushing against Quentin’s shoulder. “Tell me.”

“You know I do,” Quentin says. He licks his lips, shifts a little and whines as he moves his body, faster now, with intent. His thighs burn with it, pressure building inside, hot and low in his core. “Always want you.”

“You’re going to make me come—” Eliot gasps as Quentin rocks against him, rolling his hips in small circles, their legs all tucked up together. He feels the huffs of Eliot’s hot breath against his neck, hands gripping his hips, his cock filling him. It’s a tender ache, bittersweet, to be loved like this. “—if you keep riding me— _unnh_ —like that.”

“Yeah? That’s kinda the point.”

Eliot laughs, but it mixes with a low, broken groan. He bites the meat of Quentin’s shoulder, a sticky-hot spike of pain that sends a jolt of need straight through his core. “No, I wanna—wanna feel you come on my cock. Feels so _tight_ when you bear down on me. So—fucking— _amazing_.” Eliot is shaking as Quentin speeds up again, whimpering like he’s the one getting fucked.

“Just—” Quentin pulls Eliot’s hand down from his chest and wraps it around his aching dick, flushed and hot, precome beading at the tip. “Oh, oh yeah,” he sighs as those long fingers wrap around him, pumping slow. “And—” Quentin moves Eliot’s other hand to his throat and makes a punched out noise as Eliot _grips_ , just enough to interrupt a bit of blood flow, enough to make Quentin feel small and held and known. He likes it when Eliot covers him with his big hands, fingers against flesh, not hard enough to hurt, not really—just enough to feel the way Eliot wants him, possesses him, how he likes to use his body and take his pleasure in it. Eliot holds Quentin like that and strokes his cock, thumb running over the head and back, while Quentin moves his hips, slow now, losing himself, vision whiting out at the edges. Eliot wants him to come, so he’s going to deliver, going to make him feel so good. He feels the grip on his throat tighten, the hand on his cock speed up, and all at once he’s coming, crying out and clenching down on his cock as he spills warmth over Eliot’s fingers.

“Good,” Eliot says, shivering, “God, baby, I can _feel you_ —you—you’re _so_ hot. Oh—my God—” Quentin is panting, still trembling with the aftershocks, and Eliot grips him hard, hands sticky, pushing Quentin forward so he can grab the iron headboard. He hears himself squeak—really, no one has ever accused him of being dignified—when Eliot drives into him, one hand over his, one on the divot of his hip, driving his cock into Quentin mercilessly in firm, confident strokes.

Eliot groans, gripping him hard enough to bruise when he comes, pumping in short thrusts as he empties himself into Quentin, collapsing against him. “Q, so good. So good. I love you, sweetheart.”

Quentin is shivering, closing his eyes and huddling up against Eliot, letting the feeling take him over. “I love you, too,” he says—because he can while he’s here, whatever ‘here’ actually is. He doesn’t think about it too much this time. He’s spent hours trying to figure out how to get the fuck out of here, but now, he just wants _this_. He’ll take the pleasure and the protection, the love, while he can. Before he starts a new day and has to face, again, that this is all an illusion. He curls into Eliot and lets himself sink into unconsciousness. 

* * *

He wakes, groggy, and Eliot is stoking the fire. He knows that this place just… plays on sort of a loop in the same few years, skipping around sometimes, over and over. It’s as much sex as he’s _ever_ had, so he’s certainly not upset about that. Like, if his subconscious is just letting him replay the greatest sex-in-Fillory hits with zero depressive episodes and no actual pressure to finish the mosaic? That’s fine with him. It’s honestly—and this is a fucked up thought—a lot better than his actual life, even since coming to Brakebills. He _loves_ Eliot; he’s so in love with him, and Quentin would break the world to spend his life by his side. But out there? Eliot doesn’t want him, not like that. Yeah, they’re best friends—and he knows Eliot, the one outside of his head, values him. Their friendship. But, as much as Quentin shouldn’t focus on it—shouldn’t have focused on it after their quest—Eliot had _laughed at him_ when he’d said they should give it a shot. 

He’s trying to get out—he is. But right now, he’s safe from Eliot’s laughter, from his own cringeworthy effort to ask Eliot to love him in the real world. 

He knows this place is a lie. He can _feel_ it. The trees are always playing in a fucking loop, and it never rains. They never run out of food like they did so often those first few years. The sex is always perfect. No one ever gets too tired or pulls a muscle or has to do the lube spell _twice_ because it got sticky halfway through. And Eliot never, ever pesters him about Arielle. Never tells him he should take her to the harvest festival or invite her for dinner because he thinks Quentin is some version of straight. (What the _fuck_ , Eliot?) It had felt so much like Eliot had been trying to get _rid_ of Quentin when he got started on his master plan to pawn Quentin off on Arielle. But Quentin was always a determined motherfucker, and he’d married Arielle, yeah, but never stopped wanting Eliot. He wore him down over time, gave Eliot no _choice_ but to love him because there was no way Quentin was going to survive without him. 

Quentin has none of those worries here. Sometimes he wakes up, and he appears in the years when he was married to Arielle. Other times, he comes to consciousness, or whatever this place’s version of consciousness is, and it’s two years after Arielle died. It’s just him and Eliot and Teddy, cooking by the fire pit or playing chess on the board that Quentin had made out of birchwood and cedar.

It’s a place of uncomplicated happiness. That’s something that Quentin hasn’t had a lot of. It’s not like he’s _not_ trying to figure out what the fuck to do to get out of here, but he… takes a lot of breaks from it. Because he’s watching a twenty-nine year old Eliot, who is somehow like, eight times hotter than twenty-five year old Eliot, knead bread dough with his unfairly long fingers, _shirtless_. Honestly. It’s not like he’s going to be super dedicated to finding a way out of this place, like, _all the time_. Sometimes, sure. He has to save the world or whatever, he’s pretty sure. That’s always the way of things with them. But right now...

“Good dough today,” Eliot says. 

“Yeah?” Quentin doesn’t care. Eating here is like… eating bubbles or… ice. He thinks somewhere that his actual body is getting sustenance somehow; he can sense it. He’s not dead—he knows that. He’s just not… available. Not behind his own eyes. He’s… somewhere else in his mind. 

He doesn’t know if he’s tied up in a hedge witch safe house or stashed in a closet at Brakebills, or if he’s in a coma at Hudson Regional, but it’s something like that. It’s just that his brain is being ultra nice about it this time around—he’s not trapped in Midtown Mental Health Clinic. He’s at the mosaic with an Eliot who _loves_ him, who wants him, who doesn’t want to let go of him or _laugh at him_ or waltz into Castle Blackspire like he had some kind of right to an opinion about what Quentin did with his life. Here, he doesn’t have to hesitate or ask after Eliot in the village when he disappears for a few days at a time—because Eliot doesn’t disappear. He stays, falling asleep next to Quentin, waking him up— _often_ —with a morning blow job or his cock pressed against Quentin’s ass, a hand firm against his chest, claiming him.

Quentin has been trying to parse it out—what happened to make him retreat into his subconscious, into his memories of the mosaic. And where exactly his body ended up after his coffee shop date with Nigel. He gives it a few hours of time each day, poking at the edges until he’s worn down and exhausted, or until the Eliot that lives here is trying to get in his pants. Either way.

He’s always liked a puzzle. This one is, well, more than a little bit disturbing when he _really_ thinks about it. But he’s gotten caught up in a whole bunch of fucked up puzzles by this point in his life as a magician—what’s one more? He’s just enjoying what he can while he can. It’s started to get a little old, and he’s starting to understand why with each passing day, each relived memory. 

He watches memory-Eliot as he sweeps the floor and readies their food for the day. Eliot had always just done that—automatically stepped into the role of caring for Quentin. That part is familiar; it feels real. He has flashes of memories like this—Eliot baking, Eliot prepping the garden for spring, Eliot bringing back seedlings and food from the market, Eliot taking care of Quentin when he was sick or depressed or grieving. 

The unreal parts hurt far more than his blissful memories of falling in love with Eliot. Here, in Quentin’s mind, all of Eliot’s razor-sharp edges are gone. He tells Quentin—constantly—how much he loves him, how he’s always wanted this, that he’s the luckiest man alive. He doesn’t come home after a week’s travels, cagey about where he’s been and what he’d been doing, hints of stubble burn along his jawline. (Quentin had known, after a while, after that second year at the mosaic—but—they weren’t exclusive. They’d never discussed it—monogamy. Or even what this was—a relationship or questing-with-benefits. Not until _years_ after Arielle had died. Not until it was clear that this mission was not a passing phase in their lives; it was their lives. It always hurt. And he’d never told Eliot that it did.) Here, when he wakes up in memories when Arielle is a part of their lives, Eliot is never jealous. He doesn’t take to being passive-aggressive with Quentin. Quentin doesn’t relive that fateful night when Arielle was away, three months into his marriage. That night, he and Eliot had gotten drunk on cloudberry wine by the fire, both of them inching closer to one another until they were touching, until Eliot put down his wine and kissed Quentin, hard and heavy and violent with lust, and Quentin had pushed Eliot onto the daybed and fucked him, Quentin driving into him almost brutally, absolutely desperate, while Eliot cried out, begging for more, loud enough to wake the village down the hill. It would have been a good memory, one he’d revisit, if he didn’t know that he’d done it _without talking to Arielle_ , thereby starting a disastrous mess for all three of them. And he doesn’t relive any of the awful year after Arielle had died, where he was utterly useless more often than not.

In this life, the one in his head, it’s all domestic bliss and affection. No fighting or storming off into the woods. No infidelity. And—following—the Daybed Incident, none of the exceptionally poor negotiation of a three-way relationship that none of the three of them had navigated especially well. Of Quentin and Eliot and Arielle together, he relives songs by the fire, walking hand in hand to the harvest festival with both of his partners, a few ill-advised and blazing hot threesomes—little pockets of happiness among the fuckups. 

He doesn’t relive Teddy’s colic or his epic tantrums, the time he set the cottage on fire with his nascent pyromancy talents, the arguments with teenaged Teddy that had ended with both of them shouting, Quentin running down to the river to just _get away_ from his son. His mind has selected, apparently, the most golden of his memories, playing them out in endlessly pleasurable reruns.

You’d think that all the happy memories would feel like the real beauty of all life. But they don’t. It’s like someone has taken an oil painting and flattened its layers, hiding all of the imperfections, all the added dimension and depth. Quentin is living in a glossy print of Starry Night, Van Gogh’s whirls printed on cardstock, hanging in a dorm room somewhere.

-  
It’s starting to be a problem. Sometimes. 

There are flashes of voices—nothing he can really piece together in a way that makes sense. He’s poked at the edges of their little enclave. The forest beyond the river looks as it should—but it _feels_ wrong. The road to the village seems to be the same road they knew in this life, but Eliot always herds him back to the cottage if he starts down the road. 

_Q, I need your help in the garden._

_It’s supposed to storm—we’ll go to the market tomorrow._

_Baby, we should do another pattern before we go down to the tavern._

With a hand on Quentin’s waist and lips pressing against his neck—feeling so much like the real thing—Quentin always relents. It isn’t just the strangeness of Eliot stopping him. He feels the _wrongness_ in his gut when he steps close to the bounds. Fillory, the real Fillory, seems to be cut off from them—Quentin can feel it. He knows if he crosses the line, he’d be in a different world. Still, close to the edge is where he can _hear_ voices. On one morning, he ventures just to the edge of the road that leads to the village. Eliot is cooking, maybe, and even though he seems to be a figment of Quentin’s imagination or—something like that—he’s distracted. Not watching. And Quentin senses something like an opening, voices clearer than they have been for days—weeks, maybe.

“ _You can’t keep doing this, Eliot._ ”

“Margo?” Quentin whispers, hopeful. He doesn’t want to attract the attention of memory-Eliot. It’s not that the Eliot here has bad intentions—he just seems to want to protect Quentin. Most of the time, he panics if Quentin isn’t nearby, almost like he has some kind of agency—a force apart from Quentin’s mind. 

“Margo?” He repeats, louder this time. The leaves above him flutter in the wind, repeating their pattern after about twenty seconds. Over and over, an infinite loop. It makes Quentin’s stomach turn. It feels so much like the Midtown Mental Health Clinic of his mind, except he hasn’t burst into Taylor Swift just yet. He’s not sure if Penny-23 would give enough of a fuck to help, anyway. That guy is a dick. Not that Penny-40 was super nice, but, at least he gave fuck about something other than Julia.

“ _He’s gone, honey. I know he was your friend._ ”

“Margo!” Quentin yells, fists bunched together. “Margo! Help!”

“ _He wasn’t just—you don’t understand, Bambi._ ”

Quentin’s heart rate picks up, his stomach flipping over. “Eliot! El!” His voice cracks, and his eyes burn with the distinct prickle of tears.

“ _Then fuckin’ tell me so I understand, El. You’re not in this alone, baby. We have what we need to—”_

_“No. You can’t. You can’t kill him. Bambi, we _can’t_.”_

_“Baby, it told you that Quentin is dead. That he’s gone. It’s already killed one god. And—how many people?” A pause. “It’s Quentin’s body. But Quentin is gone, okay? We can’t let it fuck up anything else.”_

_“He’s not gone. He can’t be.”_

Oh fuck. Oh no. Jesus. He remembers—the woman. He didn’t recognize her when he was Brian, but she’d seemed so familiar. It was—what was her name? _Ora_. Trapped for centuries with that _thing_ , and Eliot had shot it. They’d thought—that night before the identity spells took effect, anyway—that it was gone for good, no longer in need of a guard at Blackspire. But. Alice had warned them, hadn’t she? Before the Library hauled her away to God-knows-where. It wasn’t gone. She said she could feel it. 

_“He’s gone, El. We lost him. It’s just—a part of this whole fucked up timeline. We keep fucking saving the world, and we’re always going to lose someone.”_

Jesus. They don’t have to lose him. He’s right here.

_“How can you—how can you be so flippant? This is Quentin. Margo, it’s _Quentin_. I feel like Julia is the _only one_ listening to me.”_

“I’m alive!” Quentin shouts over and over until his throat is hoarse. “I’m in here! I’m alive!”

_“Hey, I don’t know what you think is going on here. The Monster said Quentin is gone. Penny can’t sense him—”_

_“Penny is too busy trying to get on Julia’s dick to think straight.”_

_“Eliot. We need to bleed the stone and fucking kill that thing or get it back to Blackspire. Or it’s going to kill all of us and a whole bunch of other people. Now, tell me if honoring Quentin’s memory is worth losing another life. Or all of our lives.”_

_A long pause. “Bambi. You’re right. I don’t think I can do it—”_

_“You have to. It likes you. It trusts you. Okay? You have to. And then it’ll be over.”_

The voices faded out, a garbled mess of sound somewhere beyond the trees. He can’t make out the words, just the timbre of Eliot’s voice, soft and low and lovely, replete with pain.

“Eliot,” he cries, tears stinging his eyes. But they aren’t his eyes, really, are they? They’re an illusion in a tiny room in his mind. “El—I’m alive—Eliot, _please_.” 

A warm hand drops to his shoulder, and he jumps. It’s the mosaic-Eliot of his mind, and there’s something in his expression that looks _sad_ or _resigned_. “Don’t freak out, Q. Okay?”

“Uh. What?” He swallows hard, not sure whether he should lean into this Eliot and let himself be held, be comforted. Or if he should cut and run, get the fuck down that hill and figure out a fucking way to get out of here. 

“I guess you figured it out.”

“Figured… what out, exactly?” Quentin brushes Eliot’s hand away from his shoulder even though he wants to push into it, sink into Eliot and close his eyes. 

“I just want you safe,” Eliot says. “It’s not safe out there. There are things that can make it so you—so you’re gone. For real. Like actually dead.” He brushes a lock of Quentin’s hair behind his ear. It’s long like it was a couple of years into their key quest. 

Quentin knits his brows, stepping back from Eliot and watching his hand fall to his side. It’s not real; outside of this place, his body is killing people, torturing his friends. He only feels here because his brain _wants him to._ And now Eliot is standing there, watching him, waiting for him to say something—like he’s a real person with like, input into this situation, and not just a fever dream that fucks him at every given opportunity. “Wait. You—how do _you_ know this? You live in my head. You’re a memory. Shouldn’t you only know what I know?” 

“Quentin, this is not an episode of Star Wars.” He smirks. “Not everything follows fantasy rules.”

“Holy fuck, Eliot.” Quentin groans. “Jesus. Stop fucking around—”

He gives Quentin a sad little smile. “I don’t know what I am, baby, but I’m not exactly a memory. Okay? I can’t leave this place, I don’t think.”

“And you didn’t _tell me_?”

“It wasn’t the right time. You had to—had to figure it out. It’s like I—like I didn’t remember who I was until you did. I’m linked up with you somehow, but I’m me, too.”

“You _what_? Jesus. How—how are you—here? And what wasn’t the right time? I don’t fucking understand.” 

Eliot scrubs at his face, fingers rasping over his stubble. “I think I’m an echo from another timeline. You were long dead when the Monster came for me. I don’t have any of these memories from this time in Fillory—it was a key quest?”

Quentin nods, dazed. What’s really standing out to him right now, regardless of relevance to his situation, is that he’s been fucking an _entirely different Eliot_. One he’d _never met_. “And you were—let me get this straight. You are from another fucking timeline or whatever, and you’re trapped in my head or the Monster’s head. And I show up and we just start… fucking. Like just, like, you’ve been _rolling with this_?” He gestures to himself and the cottage, the mosaic, tiles stacked along the edges. He doesn’t know whether to be mad or utterly unsurprised. “We were never together, Eliot. In timeline 40. Where I’m from. We were only together in this time loop in Fillory.”

Eliot smiles sadly. “Oh. That’s not how it was. For us. We _were_ together. I took you and Jules—well, she tagged along—to the city to get a book—from that hedge, the one with the dark, curly hair.”

 _Jules._ She’d gone to Brakebills in the other timelines. Eliot had called her ‘Jules.’ They were friends, wherever he was from. Something pricks in his chest at that thought. 

“The fucking books? From _Kady_?”

Eliot snaps his fingers. “Yeah, Kady. Julia had some choice words for her. And we came back to The Cottage and—”

“Kady didn’t break down the door. She wasn’t at Brakebills.”

“Nobody broke down the door. If they had, they would’ve gotten an eyeful.” 

“Jesus.” Quentin blinks back tears, thinking that maybe life would be different if he’d been with Eliot. Probably still fucked up, but he wishes he’d gotten to live it.

“Ah. Well. That night was really lovely—and surprising—let me tell you. And it was—we were _happy_ before—I loved you so much, Q.” Eliot smiles, a sad little thing.

“Yeah, I more or less know the next parts. Just. I had such a crush on you. I didn’t think—” Quentin shrugs. He’d never thought Eliot would go for him, not really. He still believes that. He has evidence in his corner. 

“I loved you, and you died. And we had to save magic. And I didn’t care when the Monster came. I didn’t fight. I think I might have gotten free where I was before—that this might be just a little bit of me leftover in the Monster’s consciousness. I just know I woke up, and you were here.”

“Fuck. As if this could get any weirder.”

“We had a family,” Eliot says, an echo of his Eliot’s words.

Quentin wipes tears away from his cheeks. “Yeah, we did. You know, we lived here together for fifty years.”

“We were lucky.”

“Yeah, we were,” Quentin says. Eliot takes his hand. “Really lucky. It was—that was the puzzle, you know. We were supposed to make a design that reflected the beauty of all life. It’s a little like, corny I guess. But we got the key when—after you died. We had kids and grandkids… and—and this was our home. I guess that's what solved the puzzle. We lived a beautiful life.” 

“That’s—it’s not corny,” Eliot says. He kisses Quentin, and this time, Quentin lets him, melting a little. 

“It’s not—it wasn’t perfect. Not like you’ve seen. We fought. A _lot_. You encouraged me to be with Arielle, and I loved her so much. And I cheated on her—with _you_. It was messy and complicated and we fucked up—”

“That’s what life is. And this is—a prison in your mind, trying to keep you complacent with happy memories. I know that. I—Q, I would have given anything for a long, messy, complicated life with you.”

Quentin buries his face against Eliot’s shoulder, chest heavy. “I need to save my Eliot. He’s—stuck with this thing.”

“When the Monster possessed me, Margo took care of it. Me. Where I was. Sometimes, I could see what it was doing. It was… handsy. Very codependent.” 

“Jesus _fuck_.” 

“Okay, look. We can figure it out. I had to access a door to let them know I was alive. We can figure it out. We’ll figure it out. Okay? We make a pretty good team.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, nodding. “I suppose we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TY again to RedBlazer! [Follow me on Tumblr here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hoko-onchi-writes)! I have a novel coming in September with art from the AMAZING fishydwarrows.


	6. three books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot has some tea. Julia takes a shower. Alice drops by with a surprise.

~Eliot~

“Eliot, you can’t keep doing this,” Julia says. “You’re torturing yourself.” She places a cup of coffee on the table next to Eliot and a plate with toast, covered in butter and jam. Before Margo had left for Fillory, she’d told Eliot to buck the fuck up and get it done. Nicely, but. Still. Julia is different. He loves Margo with his entire heart, but she’s not what one would call nurturing most of the time—unless she’s dealing with Fen. (And he really has no idea what’s going on there. If his best friend seduces his wife, that’s honestly a delight among the entire pile of garbage that this season of his life has become.) 

It’s easy to see why Julia holds— _held_ —so much of Quentin’s heart. She takes no one’s shit, but she gives so much of herself when she sees someone in need. 

“Keep doing what?” Eliot lights a cigarette. It’s the second of the day. Or maybe the third. Margo can very clearly see the Monster asleep in Eliot’s bed. He should thank Julia, but the words won’t come. He barely has the energy to stay upright on the tacky-ass couch.

“Torturing yourself. Staying in the room when it gets in your bed. It’s not—doing anything _else_ , is it?”

“I slept on the floor,” Eliot says blandly. It’s mostly true. He woke up at two in the morning, with Quentin’s hand pressed against his side, holding him in place. It took him around an hour to extricate himself from the thing’s iron grip, so unlike Quentin’s fluttery hands. After that, he did sleep on the floor. Though, he thinks, it would be a stretch to call it _sleeping_. More like semi-passing out, wondering when he’d wake up with the Monster fisting his chest cavity.

“It touches you all the time, Eliot.” Julia’s voice is low and even, raspy around the edges, like a well-loved blanket. She sits down next to him on the couch. “And it always goes to your room when it wants to sleep.”

He ignores that. Because yes, obviously it keeps coming into his room, touching him with _Quentin’s hands_. “Sorry to smoke inside. I know Kady doesn’t like it.”

“Kady’s not here,” Julia says. “You got a spare?”

Eliot smiles a little at that and hands Julia a cigarette. She lights it with a twist of her fingers, and Eliot wonders if that means she’s made some headway on the whole goddess-or-demigoddess thing she’s been working on with Penny-23. It seems he was accepted into Julia’s bedroom and now permanently kicked out. He saw Kady in there this morning. Good for her. “You drawing on ambient magic—or?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” she starts. She takes a drag of the cigarette, eyes glued on Eliot’s room and the sleeping figure inside. Eliot made it shower yesterday, but it insisted on putting the beanie back on. He could see the hat poking out from beneath the covers. “I think the answer is—sometimes. But it’s amplified or something. Better than no magic.”

Eliot hums. “Yeah. I can see that.”

“Are we doing the thing again today?” She means the stone. They hadn’t gotten very far with it the night before. The ambient magic had faded out around nine, and whatever Julia’s working with seems to go on the fritz come nighttime. 

“I guess we should,” Eliot says. He flinches a little. He’d rather not think about putting the Monster back in Castle Blackspire while it’s wearing Quentin’s body. That means giving up hope, doesn’t it? 

“You don’t want to.”

“No. I don’t. I’d really rather the fuck not. It’s just that—” He scratches at his chin and pulls a curl behind his ear. His hair is getting long. He can’t remember the last time he had it cut. “—I can’t get over the feeling that Quentin is in there.” He cuts his eyes at Julia, takes another drag of the cigarette. It’s mostly ash now. He flicks the ash and disappears it with a little spell that doesn’t take up much magical bandwidth. “You’re the only one I can say that to.”

“Yeah, dude.” _Dude._ Julia is such a _dork_. “I think he’s… I don’t know. I don’t have the sense that he’s gone, but maybe I’m… maybe I’m just being too hopeful. Penny can’t get a read on him in there.” 

“He’s not as good as our Penny.”

Julia smiles. “Yeah. I didn’t know 40 all that well. This one is… fine. Besides being weirdly obsessed with me.”

“He is definitely that,” Eliot says, nodding, looking to see if Penny is somewhere angrily skulking around. “Other timeline soulmate or no.” Eliot stubs out the first cigarette and lights another because… why the fuck shouldn’t he? There’s an ancient creature in his bed wearing the skin of the man he loves. And that man likely died thinking that Eliot didn’t love him, that Eliot had thought it was such a terrible idea for them to be together that he’d laughed at the very idea. Magic is also fucked, and he’s been banished from his kingdom. In other words, it’s a pretty normal Tuesday. He laughs at the thought. 

When he looks at Julia, her hand is shaking as she smokes, her eyes rimmed with red, her hair lank. “We won’t know,” she says. “We can’t know.”

“Yeah. I guess we… won’t know. And we don’t want it murdering willy-nilly.” He thinks, sometimes, he sees something pass over the monster’s face when it looks at Eliot in quiet moments. Some intelligence that flashes in its eyes and then goes away just as quickly. It’s probably nothing—a trick of the light each time. Or perhaps Eliot has gotten so little sleep for the past six weeks that he’s hallucinating. Wouldn’t be the first time. He’s held out hope that it’s Quentin, but that likelihood is fading by the day. The thing has two stones now, one from the long dead Hakka and the other from the more recently—and violently—dead Bacchus. If it gets stones three and four, they’re not really sure what it’ll do. Given its penchant for murder and its obsession with Eliot, he’s not keen on finding out. “We should finish bleeding the stone and—”

There’s a knock at the door. Julia looks at Eliot, eyebrows knitted and hand still shaking. “Were we expecting the landlady?” 

Eliot shudders. “I certainly hope the fuck not.” Everyone who lives here has a key. Maybe it’s the fucking exterminator, but they’re never that lucky. It’s never anything _normal_.

They hear a muffled voice outside the door. It sounds high-pitched and nervous, high strung in the way that— _oh_. Julia pulls a face at Eliot and rolls her eyes. “Fucking. Just what we need. Isn’t it?” 

Eliot snorts and takes a final drag of cigarette number two. “Maybe just keep her out there. See what happens.” 

“Bitch probably knows how to pick locks,” Julia deadpans. 

“Why, Julia—you surprise me.” He smiles, and it might be the first genuine smile that he’s had in—a while, now. “Come to think of it, you know, I’m not all that surprised. Q is bitchy, too. No surprise you two are like family.”

_Is._ Not was. His thinking fluctuates.

Julia covers Eliot’s hand with hers. “Eat your toast. I’ll deal with her.”

The door is already unlocking when Julia puts her hand on the knob. She groans when she opens it. “What do you want? Here to fuck shit up again?”

“Where’s Quentin?” 

Julia nods toward Eliot’s bedroom. “He’s not Quentin anymore, but I guess you knew that.”

He tunes out their voices as Julia haltingly catches her up on the fuckery that is their lives, blocking her from coming into the apartment for now. He hears Alice’s voice above Julia’s—he knows ‘shrill’ isn’t a word that anyone should use to describe a woman’s voice. But, if the shoe fits.

He’s always hated how the ice-blond interloper and ruiner of all things magic and non-magic says Quentin’s name. _Quen-tin_. All hard consonants and sharp syllables. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone apart from Margo—and that’s a maybe—but he was jealous of Alice the moment Quentin started following her around like a lost puppy. Even in the aftermath of Mike, he’d had presence of mind enough to know that it wasn’t _right_ , this thing with Alice and Q. She belittled him and insulted him—and she thought she was _better_ than he was. He guesses he got to prove to her that she wasn’t the only one Quentin wanted. 

He takes a little solace that he knows Quentin—knew, maybe—better than anyone on the face of this particular planet. The mosaic memories fade in and out, but the important pieces have stayed. He knows the sound Quentin makes right before he comes, and he knows _exactly_ what gets him off, what makes him so hot for Eliot that he’d do _anything_ Eliot wanted. On one particular afternoon at the mosaic—he almost wishes he didn’t remember it—he’d pulled Quentin’s hair back, nipping at his neck while he rode Eliot’s cock, shaking and moaning, tears in his eyes. ‘ _Tell me she never made you feel this way._ ’ And Quentin had nodded. ‘ _No one but you, El—no one_.’ Coerced by force of sex. Manipulated. Years and years after Quentin had stopped thinking of Alice entirely. No one’s ever accused Eliot of being a good person. Case in point.

He’d given that love away, careless. But he had the memory, the bone-deep knowledge that Quentin _had_ loved him, that Eliot had shattered his world on a regular basis with mind-blowing sex, that they’d raised a child together and sent him off into the world a good man. A better man than Eliot. 

He _knew_ all the versions of Quentin that she never would. 

“Hello, Eliot.” He looks up. Apparently Julia had decided to let her in. Good times. 

He nods. “Alice.”

“I have some news.” She lifts her chin, her mouth in a haughty little line. That’s when he sees the books clutched to her chest—two Eliot Waugh books and one that says Quentin Coldwater. “I thought you might want to know—”

“Have you _read_ those?” Eliot stands, muscles aching from his—well, everything he’s been through. His body and mind _ache_ , and here this bitch is with Quentin’s book. And _his_ books.

“Yes. But listen—”

“What gives you the right?” He points his finger. “You _know_ , don’t you? Morbid fucking curiosity—is that it? Wondering why he wasn’t begging for you back while you were planning to destroy magic?” 

“Hey, Eliot.” Julia puts her hand on his arm, soft. He hasn’t brought up the mosaic with Julia—it sticks in his throat whenever he thinks about it. But she knows there was _something_ , doesn’t she? “Alice is here to help. She has information about Q. Okay?”

Eliot takes a breath, crosses his arms. In his bedroom, the thing shifts—he can _sense it_ stirring. “Be quick. It’ll wake up soon. It’s not that bright, but it’ll clue into your scheming if it comes out here and hears you. Or it might disappear somewhere to murder something—who knows?”

“Quentin’s book,” she starts, “seems to suggest that Q _might_ be in there. But I’m not sure where. It cuts off right here.” She hands Eliot Quentin’s book; there’s a yellow post-it note right at the end. 

His throat burns, the taste of copper at the back of his tongue. He opens the book. 

_Brian stepped back from the woman in fear. The air trembled around her, an air of unreality reverberating around her. He grabbed for his phone, heart pounding in his chest. She stepped closer, leering at him._

_“I think you must have me confused with someone else,” he huffed, heart catching in his throat._

_Something in the air shifts, and with a loud crack, everything around him vanishes and collapses into a small point of light, drawing him inward to a closed room deep in his mind, impenetrable from the outside._

“Holy fuck.” Eliot flips to the next page—it’s all blank after that, but there are many more pages after the drop off. 

“And if you bleed the stone, it’s going to kill Julia.” Alice’s voice, usually so even, cracks a little at the end. 

“Okay.” Julia’s arms are crossed, like she’s impatient with the idea of the Monster splitting her open. “I don’t think I can be killed.”

“It says you can. The books are—they’re infallible.”

“Look, we can avoid that—I’m sure of it. I have Shoshanna to help me. And my—whatever goddess abilities I have left,” Julia starts. “—And we can… I’m sure we can find a way to separate Quentin and the Monster. We just. Have to take our time. We can still bleed the stone and disable the Monster.”

Alice shakes her head. “We don’t know exactly what will happen to Quentin’s body. And I think—” She cuts her eyes to Eliot, still clutching their books to her chest. “I think he’s still in there. There’s nothing to suggest otherwise. And Julia—I think whatever it’s going to do really _can_ kill you. And I know we’re not—we’re not close. But I don’t want you dead.”

“Fine. We’ll make a new plan.” Julia throws up her hands. “That’s sort of our thing, isn’t it? Making a new fucking plan to save the world every five minutes?” 

Eliot keeps staring at his books, white knuckle-clutched to Alice’s chest. Quentin’s book burns in his hands. “Did you _read_ those?” His grief is palpable, a bright sharp sting—paper cuts covering the whole of his body.

Julia puts her hand on Eliot’s arm again, her skin cool against his. It’s not like it lessens the ache in his chest, the blood rushing in his ears, the feeling that the floor might just collapse beneath him. But it helps, a little. He guesses Alice is trying to be an ally; her intentions don’t lessen his anger at seeing those books in her arms. Or the weight of his guilt, the shape of this loss. The sensation that the universe might just collapse in on itself, pulling Eliot apart into threads.

“Not your—first book. That was the one from... your hometown.” She clears her throat. “But yes. I read the one that started after you moved to New York. The parts after Brakebills. And Quentin’s book. I thought it would—I thought it could help?” She sounded a little frantic. “I had to.”

He can almost hear Julia rolling her eyes—it helps to know that she’s not at all a fan of Alice. Inside his room, the Monster wakes, rubbing its eyes, bleary and sleepy and strangely like Quentin. Julia and Eliot turn to watch it as it stretches, and Alice’s gaze follows theirs. Eliot’s heart rate picks up whenever the thing moves, even if it’s just getting out of bed. But it turns away this time, and there’s an audible pop. It’s dematerialized for now, off to God-knows-where. It could be killing a god or torturing something for fun. Or it could be getting more Cheetos. It ate the last of its supply after it reappeared yesterday, seething with rage that it couldn’t get more.

“Is it—is there any of Quentin—in there?” Alice asks, her voice squeaking. 

“Not that we’ve seen,” Julia says. 

“It’s just—all the Monster?”

“What the fuck do you care?” Eliot spits the words out. “You never wanted Quentin.”

Alice narrows her eyes. “Fuck you, Eliot.”

“Jesus, you two,” Julia says. “Do you think Quentin would want this? Or do you think he’d want the _three people he cares about most_ to take care of each other?”

And that’s a low fucking blow. But Eliot—Eliot isn’t finished.

“Well then, back to the issue at hand.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, laughing, the sound derisive, mirthless. “Let me get this straight, _Alice_ —you _had_ to read Quentin’s book—and _mine_ —all the way through to come to the conclusion that Q might be alive. Information you could have gotten from the last page of his book?”

“Yes. I thought I might find something that… would tell me why the Monster possessed Quentin. Or what that possession might mean. And I don’t know much more than I did. So I’m—I’m sorry.” 

Eliot sighs. “Can you give us a minute, Jules?”

She looks at Eliot warily. “You sure?”

“Yeah—I’m not going to kill Alice. Or maim her. No telekinetic accidents in the past three years. Scout’s honor.”

“That’s encouraging,” she deadpans, patting him on the arm. “I’ll be in the shower. Kady’s getting pizza for lunch later. Text her if there’s anything you want.”

Eliot nods. “Okay.” He gestures weakly at the sofa as Julia walks up the spiral staircase. “You can—sit wherever. It’s all ugly.”

“Who’s—whose place is this?”

“Marina. Kady—stole it. Or she’s borrowing it. I’m not one hundred percent on the details.” 

Alice makes her way over to the sofa, stiff and formal as ever. “That... is interesting? I guess. I’d bet she found a way to steal it. Knowing Kady.” Her eyes dart all over the apartment in examination, the faintest hint of a smile on his face. Sometimes he gets glimpses of that girl she was when she’d started at Brakebills, the one he’d thought he was really going to like. She had every reason to despise him, even still. 

“I’d offer you a Bloody Mary, but Julia doesn’t let me drink before noon. Honestly, it’s as good a rule as any. Do you want some tea?” Alice shakes her head, and Eliot sits down on the far side of the sofa, a cushion between them. 

“No thanks. Look—I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No,” Eliot says. He blinks back tears. Fucking inconvenient, stupid tears. 

“You should read it. The parts with—the two of you.” 

Eliot looks down at the book in his hands. “I’d really rather not. I’ve had enough pain for a lifetime. I don’t—I’m not in the mood for reliving any of that.” His stomach twists. “Is it—is it all in there?”

“No. Bits and pieces. The memories you kept. Enough to… get the idea. If you’re not going to read it—”

“I’m not.”

“You should know he forgave you.”

Eliot presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, wiping away tears, his throat tight and searing hot. “I—thank you, I guess. I don’t deserve that.”

“God, stop. I’ve fucked up a hell of a lot worse than you have. You wanna help Quentin? Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop being so _morose_. Do you think it would have been a—sorry, I’m going to say it—a _good idea_ to start a relationship with Q in the middle of the key quest while you were still dealing with the fairy queen’s bullshit? Maybe Quentin thought it was a good idea because he’s _Quentin_ —”

“Jesus, Alice.” But Eliot is laughing, a little hysterical with it. 

“I’m right. I know I am.” 

“It’s not that simple—”

“Nothing is ever ‘that simple.’ But it’s one way to look at things, isn’t it? Look, we figure this out. We can make sure Julia is okay. We’ll save Quentin. And you’ve got—another chance. If you want it. Quentin isn’t the type to hold grudges.”

“You say that like you don’t _care_ —”

“Eliot, I dated Quentin for three months. I care about him. But I think—I’m pretty sure my story is different. I think he and I are better off as friends.” 

Eliot just nods. He thinks the case might be the same for him—as much as he might want another chance, he’s not sure if Quentin will want to give him one, if he even survives this ordeal. “So what’s your plan?”

“Don’t have one yet. But we’re going to figure something out. And I’m here to help, whether you like it or not.” Alice holds her chin out, defiant. She has _such_ beautiful bone structure. 

“That’s fine. You’ll have to get Julia on your side.”

Alice snorts. “I came prepared. When Santa Claus helped me escape the Library—”

“When _who_ helped you escape?”

“—I picked up a few magical objects and spell books that might… catch Julia’s interest.”

“Why, Alice Quinn, thinking ahead.”

She gives him a tight smile. “I’m not completely inept.”

“No, darling. That’s not an adjective I’d ever associate with you. Terrifying and impulsive, however...”

“Fuck off, Eliot.” Her words sound almost tender, and Eliot, for the first time in a while, was feeling just a little bit hopeful.


End file.
